Siege of Orgrimmar Raid Schedule
Don't forget that Siege of Orgrimmar Raid Finder Wing 4 opens this week! The raid is now open on all difficulty levels.

Arena PopularityHolinka shared some information about how the new region wide arena pools and new mounts are working out.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

How are queues 3 times as long now that there's 10 times as many people with 1 big pool?
To be quite honest, the bottleneck is spinning up games fast enough. A lot of people are queuing. We're working on a fix right now.This is utter music to my ears. Thank you so much! I was starting to worry WoW PvP was dying, but far from it!
Just to bang the "people love rewards" drum a bit more, 3v3 has seen a big jump (probably do to the mount achievement).It's mainly due to the 2s experience being so bad, imo- people cap in 3s instead.
2s is doing better than usual as well

The number of guild members needed to be considered a guild Group in Flexible difficulty has been reduced. Previously, the number of guild members required in Flexible difficulty didn’t account for the scaling group size. It now requires 80% of the current group size, rounded down.

Siege of Orgrimmar

Garrosh Hellscream

Hellscream's Warsong now grants a 75% increase to Physical damage dealt and health (down from 125%) on Raid Finder difficulty.

Touch of Y'Shaarj now has a 4-second cast time for players (up from 3 seconds) on Raid Finder difficulty.

Reduced the health of Minions of Y'shaarj on Raid Finder difficulty.

Battlegrounds and Arenas

Arenas

Players who pick up a Shadow Sight orb will be unable to stealth for the duration of the effect.

Next Connected Realms

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

As a part of our ongoing Connected Realms implementation, we will be connecting additional realms as listed below. We don’t have a specific date yet on when these connections will occur, but we’ll provide another update once we do. Please be aware that as a part of the connection process realm times may change to match each other.

We're currently evaluating further realm connections and will provide updates as they're available.

For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

I am on Bloodscalp any way of a having one communal forum for recruiting guild info etc. instead of 4 individual ones.
It's something we're discussing. We haven't decided anything as of yet though. It may be something that we will need to wait and do after we've determined all of the connections. We'll keep you all informed as much as possible..

Dampening and Necrotic Strike

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Ultimately it will be more difficult to heal through necrotic strike with dampening present, just like it will be more difficult to heal through ALL kinds of damage. That is the explicit purpose of the effect, and it will not benefit necrotic strike any more or less than any other attack.
Precisely. After some discussion, we came to the same conclusion. Necrotic Strike's healing absorb is no more or less difficult to heal through than actual damage. You deal with it in the exact same way: by healing the target. To put it another way, Dampening is intended to slowly lower healing output, while the amount of healing needed stays the same. To that end, we think leaving Necrotic Strike unaffected by Dampening is the right call.

I think it's also probably important to note that we're keeping an extremely close eye on how Dampening works out, not only in regard to specific concerns like Necrotic Strike but to its effect on gameplay as a whole. We feel pretty confident that Dampening will do what we'd like it to, but we'll be monitoring it closely until we're sure.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Queue SystemI've noticed that the queue always pops right after you leave the computer to get something to drink.
Devs have been experimenting with sentient “troll” code from some time now…

Seriously though, adding such an option would only cause more issues than it would solve.

Imagine entering a raid and everyone is AFK
No one likes queues right? We're always trying to improve the queue times by adjusting anything that might influence players’ behaviour in positive ways. In the end though, queues are something really simple, and unless we completely revamp standard raid requirements for heal/damage/tank slots, there’s only so much that devs can do…

The system has improved quite a lot since early days though. We’ve dynamically added goodie bags to the most “needed” class specializations, added the option to queue with one specialization and loot with another, and tweaked around with the goodie bags loot in order to make it more enticing. But, at the end of the day, queues are made up of players and player choices, and this is very tricky thing to solve, it begins with getting the right answers to the right questions.

For example, if you try to find out why are tanks always in high demand you’ll probably get very mixed responses.
-Is it less exciting to play a tank than other specs?
-Do they gear up faster than other specs? If so, why? (might lead to circular argument)
-Is it the “higher” responsibility of tanking/leading?
-Is it because they only have a few slots and that makes players afraid they won’t get guild spots?

If you have any other questions and/or answers please do share them with us, this could actually make an interesting discussion. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

AskMrRobot Update
Now that Siege of Orgrimmar is fully open, AskMrRobot has a helpful blog post on the best ways to get more gear! Keep in mind that there is a free trial available for any premium features.

I dont like to be someone who "LFR TOO HARD WHY?!?!" but, seriously. Garrosh is next level LFR. He needs some more tuning.

I strongly disagree with this. That fight is pretty easy in LFR. My group had some horrid healers and we still downed him after a few wipes, that shouldn't have happened anyway as one pull a tank left 1 min after the pull. And that's on day one... now think about 3 weeks out... will start to be one shot like the rest of the raid.

I strongly disagree with this. That fight is pretty easy in LFR. My group had some horrid healers and we still downed him after a few wipes, that shouldn't have happened anyway as one pull a tank left 1 min after the pull. And that's on day one... now think about 3 weeks out... will start to be one shot like the rest of the raid.

I dont like to be someone who "LFR TOO HARD WHY?!?!" but, seriously. Garrosh is next level LFR. He needs some more tuning.

He is next level LFR. As he should be.

It took my group tonight 6 stacks of Determination to kill him. It took some getting used to his pattern, setting players in proper positioning, and compensation for players being undergeared. But in the end he proved to be a fun, but challenging fight. Imho, I would have been incredibly upset if I had gone into the fight and one or two-shot him. This is Garrosh! Even on LFR, I want to feel SOME satisfaction for working at, and killing, the end-game boss.

I may be a masochist, or just crazy in general, but I'm the type of guy that doesn't mind dying. Each death brings closer understanding to how a boss works and how not to fight him. And, in the case of my group (whom all of which communicated and were actually GOOD players), it took us six tries before everything clicked. Will it be higher for some groups? Absolutely. But that's the nature of the game.

Premium costs literally one British pound a month. And since the site has gone on to teach me everything there is to know about stat weights, I don't even have much use for the free features anymore. The personalised BiS lists are all the help you'll ever want, no premium needed.

Originally Posted by Cronnix

Hey, they gotta make money somehow. That being said, it is a bit sad to see the game getting this automated. Not that I didn't see it coming, but still..

What's sad is that Hit/Expertise bullshit hasn't been removed from the game yet.